As told by the storyteller:

Uly and Mia travel north as winter descends, struggling to find sufficient food beneath the heavy snow. One day, Uly asks Mia if she would ever consider having kits. When Mia says no, Uly is privately wounded, thinking that she doesn’t find him appealing, but Mia continues on to say, “It’s just…families can up and die. Just like that. Or they can leave you and never come back” (258). When a blizzard threatens to freeze them to death, Uly and Mia search frantically for a warm place to shelter. They find a hole in the side of a hill and sneak inside, where they find five tiny fox kits. Mia wants to leave and absolve herself of any responsibility for them, as they are struggling to take sufficient care of themselves, but she and Uly both know that something terrible may have happened to their mother to have kept her from her litter. Uly persuades Mia to remain with the kits while he ventures out to hunt food. Mia tries to protect herself against feeling any affection for the kits, who are so helpless that she is overcome with sadness, reminded of her siblings.